The present invention relates to a supporter for a human body and a bed equipment using the same, which changes the posture of a patient lying on a bed, or helps take the patient to a bathtub or toilet. The present invention spreads a hammock between the bed and the patient lying thereon, lifts up the hammock with suspending belts, and moves the hammock in directions crossing the bed to carry the patient above a bathtub or toilet for having a bath or easing nature. After having used the bath or toilet, the patient is again taken back to the bed and laid thereon.
A bed equipment disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,072,840, which is expressly incorporated herein, corresponding to Japanese Patent Laid Open No. 3-202059, suspended a patient who could not move by his or her own ability by a hammock. The hammock carried the patient to a bathtub or toilet near the bed.
The prior art bed equipment has the merit that it has an instrument for raising and supporting the upper half of the patient's body, whereby the patient may be taken to the bathtub or toilet in a comfortable posture and taken back to the bed therefrom.
However, the prior art bed equipment has large unsolved problems; that is, how the hammock is moved between the bed and the patient lying thereon, and how it is removed after the patient has been returned to the bed. Such problems exist not only in the above mentioned bed equipment proposed by the applicant, but in other existing bed equipment.
Since the problems have remained unsolved, nurses raise the patient in their arms when the hammock is laid on the bed or removed therefrom. However, this work is very hard, and when changing the clothes of the patient lying on the bed, the nurse lifts the patient from the bed. This is heavy labor. In addition, as the patient usually lies on his or her back (facing upward), the patient often has to change position. The nurse permits the patient lie on his side, massaged the patient's back or lets the patient watch television. Changing the patient's position was also hard work.